Simply Haunted

25 Jul, 2009 By: Kyra Kudick

The Haunting in Connecticut

If you find the box art for The Haunting in Connecticut totally disturbing, you are not alone.

“It’s kinda freaky isn’t it?” asks director Peter Cornwell as he explains the image’s origin. “Back in the 1920s and ’30s this spirit photography was used when people had séances. Ectoplasm would come out of people, and that’s what that is — ectoplasm.”

Ectoplasm, ghosts, paranormal happenings. These are the ingredients for any spooky movie, but Haunting has something most don’t — it’s based on a true story.

“It’s a lot more than just a scary movie,” Cornwell says. “It is a really good mystery as well. It sucks people in, and there is just a great twist at the end.”

Actor Kyle Gallner agrees.

“It is two separate stories that survive on their own,” the actor says. “So I found that really interesting.”

Gallner plays Matt Campbell, the character most often dealing with paranormal activity, but the actor found himself dealing with some strange happenings off set as well.

“My [hotel] room was apparently a gateway to hell!” Gallner says, laughing. “I had more stuff happen to me, I think, than anybody else. I would shower, and as I was showering, it literally sounded like all my doors were slamming open and closed, so I would constantly have to get out and check.
“And then I was sleeping one night, and all of a sudden the room got freezing cold, and it felt like somebody lifted up the covers and slid into bed against me. I woke up like, ‘Ahhhh!’”

Cornwell says Gallner’s off-set experiences may have helped him develop his character. “I actually thought it was great because he got to experience the feeling of what it was like to be in a room where there might be a ghost, and then he’d come to work that day and he’s playing a scene where … there’s a ghost.”

“Oh, yeah, I was very method,” Gallner jokes. “It was kinda cool — it kept me in the mindset. Really bizarre.”

The bizarre real-life events are further explored in a two-part documentary included on the DVD in which the actual people involved in the haunting are interviewed.

The Haunting in Connecticut is now available on DVD ($29.95; two-disc special edition $34.98) and Blu-ray ($39.99) from Lionsgate.