Chapter Nine - The Realest Case Nobody Talks About

CHAPTER NINE

The Realest Case Nobody Talks About

SOUTHINGTON, CONNECTICUT. 1986.
The Snedeker family rented a house to be closer to the hospital where their son was receiving cancer treatment.

The rent was cheap.
The house was spacious.
There was just one thing they didn’t know.

It used to be a funeral home.

Complete with an embalming room in the basement.

What came next wasn’t just a haunting.
It was a breakdown of reality.

Allen and Carmen Snedeker moved in with their three sons and niece.
Their oldest son, Philip, was undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
They were already emotionally and financially stretched thin.

That’s part of what makes this story so terrifying.
They were already vulnerable.
Already scared.
And then the house turned on them.

Almost immediately, the family reported cold spots. Strange noises. Lights flickering on and off. Apparitions appearing in mirrors and doorways. Objects moving by themselves.

But that was just the beginning.

They started finding tools left over from the funeral home. Metal clamps, stretchers, and mortician’s instruments.

And then the dreams began.

Philip, the son with cancer, was the first to be targeted.

He began experiencing violent mood swings.
Saw faces in the dark.
Woke up with bloody scratches on his body.
Claimed he was being attacked in his sleep.

He described a man in black, whispering in his ear, telling him to harm his family.

One night, he tried.
He went after his cousin with a knife.

The family had him hospitalized. Assuming it was stress, medication, or mental illness.
But even after he left, the activity got worse.

Carmen Snedeker began seeing shadow figures in the basement, especially near the embalming table.
She heard voices coming from the walls.
Her niece said she was being touched at night by an invisible force.

Even Allen, the father, originally a skeptic, began to believe something was wrong.

He claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a spirit while sleeping.
More than once.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t shy.
And it wasn’t leaving.

The Snedekers contacted the church.
The church contacted the Warrens.

Ed and Lorraine arrived and immediately recognized signs of demonic oppression.

Ed believed the funeral home’s past, surrounded by death rituals, grief, and trauma, had created a perfect storm for infestation.

They claimed to uncover evidence of necromantic practices by a former funeral home worker, desecrated corpses, and Satanic rituals performed in the basement.

Whether any of this was documented is disputed.

But Lorraine’s reaction was clear:
She said the basement “crackled” with evil.
She refused to go back down there alone.

The Warrens brought in a team of priests to bless and cleanse the house.

The ritual took several days.
Objects flew off shelves.
Voices screamed through the vents.
Lights burst.

But in the end, it went quiet.

The Snedekers moved out.
The house was sold.
The next owners?
Reported nothing.

In 1992, author Ray Garton was hired to write a book about the case: In a Dark Place.
He later claimed that the Snedeker family members contradicted each other constantly.
He said Ed told him:

Everybody who comes to us is crazy. Just make it up and make it scary.

That accusation shadowed the case.
Was it real?
Was it dramatized?
Was it both?

To this day, the house still stands.
Ordinary now.
Quiet.

But those who lived through it don’t question what happened.
They don’t talk about it lightly.
And they don’t want to go back.