In A Dark Place (Ed & Lorraine Warren Book #4) (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
I have read this book several years ago at the library. I liked it so much that I purchased it - that was when it was cheap. Then they featured it on the DSC & A&E channels. Amazon.com has the hardback starting at $70 & paperback starting at $83.83. It makes for good FICTIONAL reading. I recommended it to my friend & it didn't scare her at all. DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ!Go to this link & read what the author, Ray Garton, has to say about the book he wrote:http://www.horrorbound.com/readarticl...He also doesn't have any good words for the Warrens. All of it was a hoax, just like the Amityville Horror.Also "google" or "bing" Ray Garton, or In a Dark Place &/or Ric Osunahttp://www.horrorbound.com/readarticl...excerpt: Ah, the Warrens. Ed, of course, has gone to that great haunted house in the sky, but Lorraine is still around. Back in the early ‘90s, I was offered a chance to write a book for Ed and Lorraine. As a kid, I used to follow their ghost-hunting exploits in the National Enquirer. I thought it sounded like a fun job, so I took it. I went to Connecticut and spent time with the Snedeker family. They’d moved into a house with their sick son and learned the place used to be a funeral home. They claimed all kinds of spooky things had happened in the house. They’d called in Ed and Lorraine, and after investigating, the Warrens announced that the house was infested with demons. Some of these demons had anally raped members of the family. A little aside here. Back when I was reading about the Warrens, they were ghost hunters. Every house they investigated had at least one ghost, and there was always a spooky story behind it. But after The Exorcist was so wildly popular, first as a novel and then as a movie, Ed and Lorraine stopped encountering ghosts and began to uncover demon infestations. And it seems that wherever they went, people were being sexually molested by demons. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Carmen Snedeker was an unemployed wife and mother who was running an illegal interstate lottery business, about which she asked me numerous times to tell no one. I never met the son, who was said to be ill, although I was allowed to talk to him on the phone once, supervised by Carmen. When the boy began to talk about drugs and told me that he didn’t hear and see strange things in the house once he began taking medication, Carmen ended the conversation. As I gathered all the necessary information for the book, I found that the accounts of the individual Snedekers didn’t quite mesh. They just couldn’t keep their stories straight. I went to Ed with this problem. "Oh, they’re crazy," he said. "Everybody who comes to us is crazy. Otherwise why would they come to us? You’ve got some of the story – just use what works and make the rest up. And make it scary. You write scary books, right? That’s why we hired you. So just make it up and make it scary." I didn’t like that one bit. But by then, I’d signed the contract and there was no going back. I did as Ed instructed – I used what I could, made up the rest, and tried to make it as scary as I could. The book was called In A Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting.
Based off of the story of the Snedeker haunting case. Tales of the supernatural are over the top to many people and especially to the kinds of people that have no propensity to believe in that sort of thing. The narrative doesn't flow consistently because the author was confused by all testimonies from each family member during interview. Claiming that the mother was the ring-leader in all of the madness. To top everything off, The author had never been inside of the house (which could account for the confusing floor plan in the book) and also had several suspicions about the families story. The mother was the only person that he talked to at length, and interviews with other family members were rare. This story involves the Warrens which study the controversial field of “demonology”. They have been involved in a number of haunting cases such as the Amittyville horror where both them and the Lutz family have greatly profited from their venture. The Snedeker family is no different. This haunting case has been released as a pilot episode of A Haunting on the discovery channel, an episode of Paranormal Witness, and a feature length film in 2005 released by lionsgate. All of which differ significantly between each other in terms of claims and events. Grasping the truth to this story is difficult because of the inconsistencies that accompany each carnation. When you do research about this case you should come to the same conclusion that I did, that this case seems to be from the wild imagination of a family desperate for some extra money for rent and straight up greed. Plus problems with alcoholism, a son struggling to kick his meth addiction and possible side-effects from the cancer medication the son was consuming which were experimental at the time (These series of events occurred back in the 1980s). if you are a fan of horror stories and were foolish enough to believe that the events that occurred in this book were true, I would have no doubt in my mind that there is a much more terrifying story and more unquestionably authored than this one. Aside from the inconsistencies with each interview and the fact that the mother was the one that did most of the talking, one of the warrens told the author to make several parts of the book up. The end result was terrifying but only because it was labeled as non-fiction. When you figure out that it's mostly fiction, the fear disappears. This book is out of print and finding a copy could cost hundreds of dollars. You would be lucky to find a copy either on a retailer website, a library loan or be patient and wait for a pirate to photoscan the pages of the book to read it for yourself. As far as the real story is concerned, if true we may never know what really happened in the house during their stay. There has been no paranormal activity in the house for years and during the premier of the film the current residents were harassed by investigators and ghost hunting enthusiasts. In the search for poltergeists and demonic possestions, all possible explanations can be explained with phenomenon that discredits the supernatural and favors the known natural principals of nature and physics.
What do You think about In A Dark Place (Ed & Lorraine Warren Book #4) (2014)?
I initially liked the writing and would have rated it a 4 were it a work of fiction, but since it was trumpeted as a true story and since it was clearly such a monstrous piece of bullshit nonsense, I gave the book a 2. Ed & Lorraine Warren didn't deserve a higher rating and I figured that any author who would get lumped in with them and with this ridiculous and exploitative story didn't, either.However, I just listened to Ray Garton being interviewed on "Monster Talk" where I learned that he pretty much feels the way I do, doesn't like the books, and is certain that the people involved with the story made it up to cover their son's mental illness as well as to help with their financial difficulties. So, THEY (the Warrens and the Snedekers) were the bullshitters and Garton has never been anything but contemptuous about them. Good on him.References:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Gart...http://www.horrorbound.com/readarticl...http://www.skeptic.com/podcasts/monst...
—Lauren
I read this book TODAY. Picked it up to skim the first chapter, then found myself unable to put it down. My mom recommended this book to me and loaned me her first-edition copy, so I just want to say...thanks, Mom!The Snedekers live in New York until their oldest son, Stephen, is diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. When the commute back and forth between NY and CT becomes too much and too costly, the family moves to Connecticut, closer to Stephen's doctors. That's when it begins.It turns out, their
—Samantha
After it was revealed from the author that the story was false and the entire events documented a hoax, this novel ended up being a rare find for anyone interested in reading it. I finally was able to get my hands on it through a library loan, and while the story itself is frightening, it is just another documentation revealing one of the many versions of the events the family claims have happened to them.Each time the story is told, mainly by the mother, it changes. Not a single movie, documentary, article or book is the same. The story just grows more and more bizarre and unbelievable that eventually it ends up being just another Amityville Horror. Not surprising that this story made headlines soon after the Amityville haunting was hot off the press. Besides, who wouldn't believe it? An old funeral home, still holding old tools and machines making it hard to forget what it used to be? It was the perfect setup for their story to grip an audience. Only, they just couldn't stick to one story.In a way, I am conflicted. Part of me hoped this was a true story, because how horrible to harm your family with stories of rape by an unseen spirit, and making your son out to be a monster driven mentally insane just to try and profit from the haunted house hysteria of that time. On the other hand, I'm now convinced it is nothing but a hoax, where the mother herself has done just as much damage to her family as the story she continues to make up. Whether or not you believe, the book is a frightening read if you can get over the often painfully sterile writing style which is oddly similar to Jay Anson.
—Melissa Bond
