Talk:The Haunting in Connecticut

Cleanup

• I've (once again) cleaned up the article (removed excessive plot notations), removed the unverifiable content, cited relevant material, and rewritten the plot summary to make it more encyclopedic. I have also removed the template regarding the excessive plot matter. It would be to the benefit of the article if people refrained from adding anymore unsourced content or misusing citations on unverifiable quotes or claims. Oh, and just for posture: I've removed the below comment regarding "Hello Pappy..."bwmcmaste (talk) 08:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

• [redacted]

Actual Events

• Update: I've cleaned up the article, added substantial content, and taken out alot of the poor structuring and prose that was mentioned earlier in this discussion. The article reads more like the others that we have here on Wikipedia, but I'd like it if someone could grab some better inline citations for my contributions: The site that I've sourced them from are blocked by Wikipedia's spam filters (even though it is running a legitimate story). If I were to weigh my opinion based on the research that I've done for this article: I would have a hard time believing that this movie was anything other than a horror/thriller, based on a story written by a guy, who has admitted that he intended to produce a work of fiction. bwmcmaste (talk) 19:16, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

• to agree with the others on this page: There should be an expansion on these "true events". It would be a good contribution to this article, or as an interesting article on its own. bwmcmaste (talk) 17:53, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
• Sounds like a reprint of the movie's press release. Shouldn't there be some discussion of the "true events" that the movie is supposedly based on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.237.21.167 (talk) 01:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• The author of the original book about this (In a Dark Place by Ray Garton) has repeatedly expressed his displeasure at his experience writing the book, calling it an all time low in his career as an author. He states that this is a work of fiction. I really don't think that a discussion of the veracity of the story is that necessary as it is discussed in the wiki article on Ray Garton and this is just an article on a film that claims to be "based on a true story". Well, it is based on a true story, as these are real people who lived in a real house.

DFS (talk) 10:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

• the movie claims that it is based on a true, yet Wiki has nothing to say about this in its article on the movie. the claim is very prominent in the ads for the movie. the Wiki on Ray Garton doesn't say any of that. And so what if it writing it was so unpleasant? is the "true story" about how unpleasant writing this story was? or are we on the same page here. is it only a "true story" based on the characters being based on real people but that nothing like in the movie actually happened to them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.237.28.26 (talk) 02:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Not a forum

Guys, can we limit the dis, this is not a forum for discussing the movie. Tubussion to improie, do thaularbells1993 (talk) 11:54, 20 March 2009 (UTC)ving the:: agreed 66.235.9.1ct elsewhere, like IMDb. If you have info regarding any of this stuff along with a request to somehow integrate it into the article, that's fine5 (talk) 03:47, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

article? If you would like to

Mental state of the family who related this "true" story?

Garton has, however, noted that he doesn't like this book, and is glad it is out of print, saying: "The family involved, which was going through some serious problems like alcoholism and drug addiction, could not keep their story straight, and I became very frustrated; it's hard writing a non-fiction book when all the people involved are telling you different stories —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.168.175.84 (talk) 20:18, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have met the kid who allegedly had cancer, he was a drug addict and he was constantly seeing things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bankman (talk • contribs) 00:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Luckily, that's covered in the skeptical inquirer article I referenced in my edit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skeptic practitioner (talk • contribs) 07:32, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

No longer haunted

I'd like to believe that, unfortunately, I cannot as it is not sourced. A lot of this article needs sourcing or at least citations (until I can figure out which I will not add any templates) Tubularbells1993 (talk) 15:10, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Good! so far...

Now that we have laid out the supposed 'true story' on which this work is based, why don't we move on to merging the two sections? Tubularbells1993 (talk) 00:38, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that some clean-up is in order first. Articles from Spill.com are not reliable sources, so they should be replaced. In addition, wtop.com and newsday.com are the same article, so only one should be cited. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

this actually was a true story —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.222.29.98 (talk) 22:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I trust the skeptical inquirer article is a good one to shed some light on this case then. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skeptic practitioner (talk • contribs) 07:33, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Reference cleanup & copyediting

I just did a good bit of reference-citation cleanup and some copyediting, and I wanted to make one point here that all editors adding references should take to heart. Never, never, ever use bare links as references. A bare link is just the URL of a webpage (e.g., http://blah-blah-blah.com/whatever), with absolutely no information about what the link is supposed to show.

The reason for this is that the Web is extremely dynamic, and your link has a good chance of being broken for many reasons – expired news story, website reorganization, change of ownership, web server unavailability, etc. It is extremely important to include as much information as possible to allow editors to fix these links when they break. Stuff like page or article title, author, work (newspaper or book) title, website name (which is sometimes very different from the web domain name), date of page (especially for news articles), and publisher (e.g., Associated Press, which is the original publisher of many news-feed services like Yahoo! News and local media outlets), all help us to find a new source for the old information, especially when the Wayback Machine hasn't archived a copy.

You don't need to fill in a formal {{citation}} template like I do, but at least include some of the above information between the <ref> and </ref> tags. Thank you for your assistance. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:39, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

• I removed an edit made by a user that removed the word "claims" from the section for "true-story claims". Clearly, there is no indisputable proof (or even marginally reasonable proof) that a majority of this story is "true"; hence we should continue to refer to any such reference as a "claim" in lieu of any suggestion that it is fact. bwmcmaste (talk) 02:31, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Carmen Reed AKA Carmen Snedeker

• I have posted a link in the External Links section for Carmen Reed's website. Verily Carmen Snedeker is now known as Carmen Reed, and identifies herself as a "Spiritual Advisor". This is according to the following link: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/31004/a-haunting-connecticut-what-really-happened bwmcmaste (talk) 09:11, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

General Cleanup

• I have cleaned up the plot section of this article (yes, once again!) and removed all of the excessive details. I would just like to remind everyone that we do not need strenuous details on every aspect of the story: A quick summary of what the movie is "about" is good enough for an encyclopedic entry. We don't need the whole screenplay for the purposes of this article. However, I've added a "refimprove" template to the top of the article, as we need to acquire some citations for the plot content. bwmcmaste (talk) 02:58, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

• I've done a quick revert of the plot section (same as above). bwmcmaste (talk) 04:11, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

• I did a minor rewrite of the plot and beefed up the intro a bunch. The rewrite was mainly to cleanup the grammar and prose of some fellow contributor's additions to the plot section. bwmcmaste (talk) 00:06, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
• Added a production section and quote from Roger Ebert to balance out the tone of reviews (interestingly enough: Mr. Ebert actually quoted this article in the making of his review). http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090325/REVIEWS/903259997

Vandal repair & Studio Info

• I fixed some vandalism by User talk:173.48.68.50. Verily, they thought it would be funny to delete an entire section.
• Also, I'm not really sure why tax credits (i.e. Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit) were listed in the studio section of the infobox, but I have removed them. At the very least this is not the right place for them, and they create an unnecessary amount of clutter. bwmcmaste (talk) 23:00, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

More Cleanup

I reverted some duplication vandalism and cleaned up some reference vandalism.--Auric (talk) 16:46, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Haunting in Connecticut/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

• Lead: Per WP:LEAD, the lead section should be a concise overview of the article body. Currently there is only one basic sentence.
• Production: There is no section about the film's production. Where was it filmed? What was the writing process like? How did they create the effects for ectoplasm?
• Critical reception: There could be more samples of reviews, and outside of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, avoid using a single review to make a blanket statement about all critics. For example, The Charlotte Observer credited the acting, but this does not mean other reviews did.
• Box office: "Domestic" will mean the United States and Canada. Also, how much did the film make total in these combined territories? Mention that figure and mention the figure from "other territories" and provide the worldwide total.
• External links: Per WP:EL, there should be a limited number of external links in this section. As many links as possible should be implemented in the article body and others removed.

Overall, the article is a reasonable start, but I think it falls short of Good Article standard mainly due to lack of content. More research could be done to flesh out the article in all quarters. I can put the article on hold for improvements to be made, but I think there is too much to be done for a hold. Does the primary editor believe he/she can do the work? Please look at Good Articles Doomsday (film) and Vampyr for an idea of how much a Good Article should cover.

Reviewer: Erik (talk) 14:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Due to lack of followup of the above points, I am failing this Good Article nomination. Erik (talk) 13:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

• I have addressed the majority of the issues listed in the initial review, and the article should be conversant enough to satisfy the criteria for Good Article status. bwmcmaste (talk) 01:18, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

This article has a page format issue which I had corrected with my edit. Unfortunately the latest edits have reverted my edit leaving the quote box hanging on the right between two sections viewing in Firefox. The section on the DVD release makes no sense datewise placed before the sections on Critical Reception and Box Office. I only edited this article on a chance encounter and do not wish to get further involved, but I would not support this as a Good Article in its current state.Bill Oversixty (talk) 15:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Haunting in Connecticut/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: BelovedFreak 10:02, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   Needs a good copyedit and attention paid to MoS issues.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   Some better sources are needed, one issue bordering on OR in the true story section, detailed below.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   More information needed about production and reception

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   seems reasonably stable, most recent edits seem to be in preparation for GA review

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   no problems here

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Too many issues to be dealt with at this time.

I will go through the criteria in more detail, section by section.

Infobox

• "Promotional film poster" doesn't need a link, it's obvious what that means
• As a side note, no article for Peter Cornwell? Looks like he's won some awards, would probably meet notability guidelines for an article
• For "studio", I don't think you need all those companies, particularly the ones with the "with the participation of" credit
• For "distributed by", include Maple Pictures, as they distributed in Canada

Prose/MoS

Quite a lot of work to be done here including some glaringly obvious problems, like the first sentence.

Lead

• "The Haunting in Connecticut is a 2009 psychological by Gold Circle Films, and directed by Peter Cornwell. " - this makes no grammatical sense. Also, when fixing it, put the director's name before the production Company's & please state that it's an American and Canadian film.
• Is it a mortuary of a funeral home? They're slightly different aren't they? later on, you say it's a formaer funeral home, with a mortuary in the basement. Please make the lead consistent with the rest of the article.
• "Supposedly based on the "true story"" = this is vague. Why the scare quotes around "true story"? What do you mean by "supposedly"? Please make it clear whether or not these was actually a true case that this could have been based on, who said it was based on true events, and whether or not that was in fact true. What about the book, was that an accurate account of a true story? It's all a little bit confusing. More on this in the next section.
• "auther" is an incorrect spelling
• Why is thee a colon after In a Dark Place?
• The Haunting in Connecticut should be in italics
• citations should be placesd after punctuation, not before, and no space in between: "moderately successful film, grossing $76,501,870[1]," → moderately successful film, grossing $76,501,870,[1] - this needs addressing throughout the article
• "received the "generally unfavorable reviews" distinction from Metacritic." - this is a bit too vague for a summary of the reception. At the moment, the reception section itself needs expanding, but more on that later. For the lead, there's no need to mention Metacritic. For one thing, I am wondering, why Metacritic but no mention of Rotten Tomatoes? Why pick one over the other? For another thing, the average reader won't know all about Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, so that statement isn't going to mean that much to them. Better to have a short summary of what the reviewers actually thought. but, for that, it will need expanding further down.
• The Haunting in Georgia should be in italics

Plot

• I don't think cancer really needs a link - everyone knows what it is, and I doubt that clicking through to that article will give any insights into this film. It shouldn't have a capital letter.
• Since there appears to be no cast list (which is fine) it would be nice to have the names of the actors in parentheses for the characters that are mentioned in the plot
• "begins experiencing violent and supernatural events that the parents initially blame on stress and hallucinations from Matt's treatment..." - Ok, I haven't seen the film, and maybe it's just a really bad story, but I don't understand why they would blame "violent and supernatural events" on someone's treatment. this makes no sense. Could you try to clarify this a bit? Is it only Matt that is having the experiences? Do they not believe him?
• "Matt also experiences visions from the perspective of a young teenager from the 1920s named Jonah." - this is a bit unexplained. How does he know he's a teenager form the 1920s? Does he just know?
• "The Jonah character" sounds awkward; why not just "Jonah"
• "The film comes to its climax ..." - you don't really say what happens at the end. It seems to tail off in a vague way. Is he successful? (Also, you mention more about this in the lead, make sure everything in the lead is mentioned/expanded on later on)
• The plot is nice and short; less is often more for plot sections as they can get too detailed and unwieldy. However, I think that this plot summary would benefit from a little bit more detail as it's a bit vague and confusing.

True story claims

• "Promotional material for the movie claimed..." - "claimed" is rarely a great word to use, since it makes the reader think straight away that the person doing the "claiming" is lying or wrong. "said" is usually fine.
• It's not really clear what happened here.
  • Someone wrote a book about some real life supernatural happenings. Someone else made a film based on the book. Later, people said that the facts presented in the book weren't true.
  • Someone wrote a book about some real life supernatural happenings. Later, people said that the facts presented in the book weren't true. Later still, someone decided to make a film based on the book and ignored the people that said it wasn't true, and said that the film was based on true events.
  • Someone wrote a book about some real life supernatural happenings. Later, people said that the facts presented in the book weren't true. Later still, someone decided to make a film, not based on the book especially, but on their own research into the events, ignoring the people that said it wasn't true, and said that the film was based on true events. The film was not directly based on the book.
• Those are just three possibilities, and it may seem like nitpicking here, but I was genuinely confused when reading the article. There's no sense of the fimmakers in the story; why did they decide to make the film, were they aware that the stories had been debunked or dismissed by other people? Was it all part of a marketing ploy? When I fist read the statements in the lead, I got the impression that it was a The Blair Witch Project type situation, with a "true story" created to sell the film. This needs clearing up.
• "The Snedekers moved into a house in Southington, Connecticut, and would later claim..." → The Snedekers moved into a house in Southington, Connecticut, and later claimed
• "plagued by some manner of demonic presence" - can we be no more specific here? Is there no other detail?
• "The house was examined by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The story follows that mortuary equipment was discovered..." - this is very wordy. Why not ust The house was examined by Ed and Lorraine Warren who discovered mortuary equipment
• "Lorraine Warren would later state, "In the master bedroom..." → Lorraine Warren said, "In the master bedroom...
• "Lorraine Warren has told the Associated Press..." → Lorraine Warren told the Associated Press
• "The story was also covered in an episode of the A Haunting TV-series..." → The story was covered in an episode of television docudrama A Haunting.
• "Since its inception many statements have been leveled with the book (the basis for the movie's story) In a Dark Place" - Ok, first of all, this is the first mention of the book. (remeber the lead is a summary, not an introdcution). As a reader, I'm thinking, what's In a Dark Place and what does that have to do with anything? Introduce the book, say why it's relevant. At this point, I don't even know what it's about. As for the prose, do books have an inception? Aren't they just written? "many statements have been leveled with the book" is not quite right. Please be more specific who criticised the book and for what.
• "Ray Garton, remarked on the statements of the family members: "I never met the son..." - what statements by family members?
• It would be very helpful to have some dates. We know that the incidents happened in the 1980s; that's a whole decade, can we be more specific? When was the book written? When did Joe Nickell investigate?
• "Congressman Chris Murphy also lived in the house for a year and claims he had no paranormal experiences." - this seems really random and not particularly relevant. Does the fact that someone lived in the house prove that there were no paranormal incidents? Including the statement here, with no interpretation by a reliable source is kind of original research. You are presenting a fact and hoping that the reader will interpret it a certain way. It's also not necessary for us in this article to say whether or not the incidents really happened, it's more about was said and how it was reported.

Production

• Per MOS:DATE, don't use "of" or "th" in dates; "10th of September, 2007"→10 September 2007. BUT, should it be September 10, 2007? It should be for US-related articles. Canada-related articles can go either way apparently, so I'd probably go with the month, date year format. Whichever it is though, make it consistent throughout the article.
• Most of this is about the release, so shouldn't be in a production section. Perhaps combine the theater release with the DVD release in one section

Critical reception

• Rotten Tomatoes should not be in italics

DVD release

• Not sure that quote box is really necessary. It doesn't contain anything particularly riveting for the reader.

References

• several references are bare URLs, please add title, work, publisher, author, date, accessdate where avilable
• Box Office Mojo shouldn't be in italics
• Two links are dead = the fangoria review and the msn money central report

External links

• There still seem to be a lot of links here. Are they all necessary? The Gold Circle link for example, doesn't really add anything, and is out of date as it says the film is "in production".
• The online video - don't list it here, use it as a source to add more info to the article

References, sources, citations

Plot

• You don't really need citations for the plot, because the film itself is presumed to be the source. The exception would be anything controversial, likely to be challenged or open to interpretation. In addition, plot synopses on IMDb are user added, and not considered to be reliable sources.

Box office

• "surpassing expectations of box office analysts" - is that backed up by that source? I don't see it in there

General

• IMDb shouldn't be used for plot details, as mentioned. it's generally ok for other details, although not 100% accurate; it's best not to rely on it for details that can be obtained elsewhere, which I bet a lot of these could.

Broad? Focused?

True story claims

• It may be that there is too much information here. Was there much WP:RS coverage of the case? If so, it might be worth writing a separate article , and just keeping the stuff here that is directly relevant to the film. At the moment, it's hard for me to tell how much is directly relevant as the article doesn't tell me how much of the film was based on the events. Something to think about though.

Production

• Far too short, and most of the 2-sentence section is about the release of the film, not the production. Given the previous section, I am interested to know why the filmmakers decided to make a film about the story, at what point they got involved etc. I see from the details about the DVD that there are two DVD commentaries available as well as several featurettes. These need to be used to write this article! I bet there's a wealth of information there. Note that, for GA, articles do not have to be "comprehensive", but they do need to be "broad" and cover the major topics. This is not the case at the moment.

Critical reception

• Much more cold be added here. 94 reviews from Rotten Tomatoes? Let's see what some of them said! It's ok to mention RT and metacritic, but don't over rely on them. Use them to point you in the direction of reviews. Since it was fairly negatively received, say why, what in particular did they not like. Who did like it? Summarise in particular the most respected / popular reviewers and make sure there are some Canadian ones in there.

Box office

• Does that include Canadian revenue? Remember it's a joint US/Canadian production.

Pass/fail

I'm afraid I'm going to have to fail this article; there are too many issues holding it back at the moment. Please don't be discouraged from improving the article by my review, with a bit of work it will get there. I wanted to provide a detailed review so you know what there is to work on. It really does need more information with regard to production and reception. Prose needs sorting out too. I suggest when these issues have been dealt with, you request a peer review to make sure it's up to scratch before nominating it again. At the very least, ask someone else to read through it. There are some silly little mistakes in the prose that could have easily been picked up by a fresh pair of eyes. Erik's advice above was good; look at other film articles that are GA, and FA, to see what you are aiming for. Good luck, --BelovedFreak 11:30, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand

The true story part. One problem is that the Campell/snedecker/whatever their name is case doesn't have it's own article. Because the whole part is unclear and confusing, this makes me wonder if it's describing claims made in the trailer, or if it's describing real life claims that the movie is based on. And deside on the family's name already! Is it Campell, Snedecker or Parker? Is the movie based on real life claims? If so, make that clear.DnivyØ (talk) 17:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:The Haunting in Connecticut/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

==Assessment== I took the liberty of doing an overhaul of the article. I've removed the excessive plot notations, faulty citations, and erroneous additions. I have also placed relevant and accurate citations in with the article and checked the reference list. After performing an assessment of the article: I found it to be well within the criteria expected of a B-Class article. bwmcmaste (talk) 04:46, 23 August 2009 (UTC) ===Improvements Still Needed=== The article will likely need to be cleaned up over time, as people seem to be compelled to expand the plot section beyond necessity (and without references) on a regular basis. The section dealing with the proposed sequel to this movie should be updated as time goes on. bwmcmaste (talk) 09:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Last edited at 09:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC). Substituted at 08:11, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Ed/Lorraine Warren

under the"controversy" section it says people who worked with the Warren's "admitted" ed warren had instructed them to "make up scary stories", etc....but when yet it really from a neutral unbiased perspective should say they "admitted/alleged" so...as Possibly what they've said is untrue and slanderous about the Warren's supposed lies and untruths,etc etc 2A00:23EE:11E8:5CBB:4938:BC26:372E:A04A (talk) 00:43, 19 May 2023 (UTC)